Wish me luck...

Well, here's unexpected!

I went in for another blood test and scan this morning. It turns out Myndi was right, and the large 'follicles' I had last month were the same sort of cysts that I had last September. One of them had disappeared completely and the other had shrunk to 10 mm, so the doctor was satisfied, although he still found my right ovary quite hard to find.

All then depended on the oestradiol, and I must confess I assumed it would be too high again and was resigned to waiting for next month.

Having had the tests, I went off to Niece #2's pre-school sports day. I was then due to look after #2 and #3 while my sister took #4 for her 8 week check and first lot of jabs.

Two things changed the plan somewhat. First, I had a call from the clinic saying that I was OK to start and should do my first jab as soon as possible. Expecting to be told to wait another month, I hadn't yet acquired any drugs, so said I would go back to the clinic to pick them up as soon as I could.

Then my sister reappeared a lot sooner than expected, because she had forgotten to register #4 at the doctor's surgery in advance (and nobody had reminded her, despite the fact that she had been there twice since #4 was born and had an appointment for this afternoon), and because she wasn't on the doctor's computer, they wouldn't give her the jabs.

So off I hopped back to London, where Aussie Nurse presented me with a huge bag of tricks. She offered to mix the first jab for me (450 IU of Fostimon), so I was able to watch her do it and refresh my memory, then I gave myself the jab right there in the office (which has four desks, all of which were occupied at the time, as well as the reception desk, at which there were a couple of people waiting). So OK, now I'm shooting up in public.

If you've been willing my oestradiol levels to go down, or praying for me, I'd like to thank you, because it clearly worked. On nosing through my file, I found that last month the level actually went up to 230 on the second day they tested it. Today, it was down from 230 yesterday to 93, which with FSH of 6.9 is awesome!

I'm back for another blood test tomorrow morning - and every day, including weekends, until egg collection. As well as the hormone panel, I'm having blood taken tomorrow for a natural killer assay - since my natural killer cells were slightly raised when I had my immune testing in March and levels can fluctuate from month to month anyway, they need to know what they're doing right now, so they can decide whether I need steroids or even IVIg - I hope not the latter, as each dose costs £1,300.

And in the meantime, the big thing I need to work on is that this clinic requires everyone on treatment to drink at least two litres of water and one litre of milk a day and to eat - preferably something containing protein - every two or three hours. I have a big bag of beef jerky and lots of nuts and seeds, so that shouldn't be too hard.

Six hours after the first jab, my stomach already feels bloated, so I think I can safely say that's a side effect I can look forward to over the next couple of weeks. Apart from that, I'm apprehensive and excited in equal measure.

Here we go...